Bong Hits 4 Jesus only outside of school

While we wait for the slip opinion to be posted by the SCOTUS, I figure if we can keep discussion on point - the merits of the case and what we can tell of the findings from reports - instead of breaking down into "Scalia is a loser!" rants as if we are all pimple-faced 15 year olds who are more concerned with making cool blanket statements than with understanding the Court's reasoning, we'll be better off.

Anyway, so it looks like the Court's ruling broadened the power of a school to prevent students from making statements that undermine, or appear to undermine, the school's efforts in promoting student welfare (here the school's drug free goals). I'm not surprised, and I am curious to see if the Court pushed the control to students in general or only at school-sponsored events. Also, how might this affect the those who attend school events, but aren't students - especially when the event is open to the public?

Also, I'm curious to know where the dissent would have gone. Breyer didn't want to get into the Constitutionality, did the rest want to lessen school control or avoid the issue as well? Also, I'm curious to know how SB would have avoided it - apparently he wanted to rule that the kid couldn't sue. I'm curious to see how he cut the kid off.

I'm not sure how I feel about this case - I got nailed with it while in HS, and I really didn't like those restrictions. But, at the same time, when there are statements that need to be controlled, it is often less controversial if the blanket is just a bit larger than what you need (as long as you aren't curtailling what should be protected speech).

I can live with the ruling. it says to me there are limits on being a punk in school. If the kid wanted to actually say something meaningful, I would have supported him, however, he admits to just wanting to get a rise out of the principal.

I seem to remember that this case involved a kid from the school, but off school grounds and outside school property.

Seems like a non-school issue to me.

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I believe he was across the street, not on school property.

If that is indeed the case I have a huge problem with this. The school should not be telling students what they can and can not do when they are not at school.

However this does bring up some interesting things. They saying "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" constitutes drug references and thats why the court said it could sanction it. How about religion? The statement sanctions Jesus over other Gods. (Im sure there are other gods that would like a bong hit BTW )

How will this effect the cases of Christians that have cases in the system now because they had to change their T-shirts that had ant-gay comments? After all if 'Bong Hits 4 Jesus' endorses illegal drugs and the students need protection form that thought they certainly need protection from students bigotry. No?

From Wiki, so take it with a grain of salt, but "Frederick, who was late for school that day, joined some friends on the sidewalk across from the high school, off of school grounds."

Off school grounds, not the school's problem. Great job SCOTUS

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Not quite according to Time:

"The case started in 2002, when the Juneau-Douglas High School in Alaska let students cross the street to watch the Olympic torch pass on its way to Salt Lake City. As TV cameras rolled, senior Joseph Frederick and several friends unfurled the infamous banner, thinking it was, according to Frederick, "meaningless and funny," just a way "to get on television." But the school principal was not amused, and when Frederick refused to take the banner down, she suspended him for 10 days. Frederick sued the principal and school for violation of his free speech and won in the lower federal courts, but the Supreme Court accepted the case on appeal."

So it looks like they were off campus but under school supervision (like a field trip). I do not have a problem with it then - as long as the kids are under the schools watch at the time.

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It sounds like the students were let outside during school, ie an assembly just outdoors. If it was indeed between the hours of 7AM and 3PM (or whatever arbitrary time school is in session) Then I totally agree with the ruling. I'll never forget the trouble I got into for buying a zippo on a 7th grade field trip.

First, it make the already incoherent law on students' First Amendment rights even more incoherent, by carving out an exception to free speech when other people seeing/hearing the speech, not the speaker himself, think that the speech involves oblique advocacy or apparent advocacy of drug use.

Second, this kind of viewpoint discrimination is incompatible with the spirit of the First Amendment As the dissent states:

Although this case began with a silly, nonsensical ban-
ner, it ends with the Court inventing out of whole cloth a
special First Amendment rule permitting the censorship of
any student speech that mentions drugs, at least so long
as someone could perceive that speech to contain a latent
pro-drug message.
...
Even in high school, a rule that permits only one point
of view to be expressed is less likely to produce correct
answers than the open discussion of countervailing views.
Whitney, 274 U. S., at 377 (Brandeis, J., concurring);
Abrams, 250 U. S., at 630 (Holmes, J., dissenting); Tinker,
393 U. S., at 512. In the national debate about a serious
issue, it is the expression of the minority's viewpoint that
most demands the protection of the First Amendment.
Whatever the better policy may be, a full and frank dis-
cussion of the costs and benefits of the attempt to prohibit
the use of marijuana is far wiser than suppression of
speech because it is unpopular.​

I can't imagine how this is good policy, or how it helps train high school students for responsible citizenship.

I just find it depressing that in the other "free speech" ruling today the Court said that it had to tread lightly and err on the side of protecting free speech. Of course, in the other case the speech in question was campaign advertising money. Of course, the Court's never claimed to be consistent.

I still think our new Court members are showing their colors.

The principle sounded like she was just trying stifle dissent. The student's presumed message was at odds with official school propaganda, so he got suspended. Way to go, Supreme Court.

Published: June 26, 2007
The Supreme Court hit the trifecta yesterday: Three cases involving the First Amendment. Three dismaying decisions by Chief Justice John Robertss new conservative majority.

Chief Justice Roberts and the four others in his ascendant bloc used the next-to-last decision day of this term to reopen the political system to a new flood of special-interest money, to weaken protection of student expression and to make it harder for citizens to challenge government violations of the separation of church and state. In the process, the reconfigured court extended its noxious habit of casting aside precedents without acknowledging it  insincere judicial modesty scored by Justice Antonin Scalia in a concurring opinion.

First, campaign finance. Four years ago, a differently constituted court upheld sensible provisions of the McCain-Feingold Act designed to prevent corporations and labor unions from circumventing the ban on their spending in federal campaigns by bankrolling phony issue ads. These ads purport to just educate voters about a policy issue, but are really aimed at a particular candidate.

The 2003 ruling correctly found that the bogus issue ads were the functional equivalent of campaign ads and upheld the Congressional restrictions on corporate and union money. Yet the Roberts court shifted course in response to sham issue ads run on radio and TV by a group called Wisconsin Right to Life with major funding from corporations opposed to Senator Russell Feingold, the Democrat who co-authored the act.

It opened a big new loophole in time to do mischief in the 2008 elections. The exact extent of the damage is unclear. But the four dissenters were correct in warning that the courts hazy new standard for assessing these ads is bound to invite evasion and fresh public cynicism about big money and politics.

The decision contained a lot of pious language about protecting free speech. But magnifying the voice of wealthy corporations and unions over the voice of candidates and private citizens is hardly a free speech victory. Moreover, the professed devotion to the First Amendment did not extend to allowing taxpayers to challenge White House aid to faith-based organizations as a violation of church-state separation. The controlling opinion by Justice Samuel Alito offers a cockeyed reading of precedent and flimsy distinctions between executive branch initiatives and Congressionally authorized spending to deny private citizens standing to sue. That permits the White House to escape accountability when it improperly spends tax money for religious purposes.

Nor did the courts concern for free speech extend to actually allowing free speech in the oddball case of an Alaska student who was suspended from high school in 2002 after he unfurled a banner reading Bong Hits 4 Jesus while the Olympic torch passed. The ruling by Chief Justice Roberts said public officials did not violate the students rights by punishing him for words that promote a drug message at an off-campus event. This oblique reference to drugs hardly justifies such mangling of sound precedent and the First Amendment.

Me an Jesus used to do bong hitz behind the history teacher's van between second and third period. There was woods across the street where we went for lunch... in the 1980's when free speech was still legal everywhere in America.

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